My Biggest Journal Yet: Going 10x on SEO

Got a ton done today.

Publishing numbers were not the highest I've had but I spent some time doing some much-needed admin stuff for the sites and getting parasites and social ready for sites 3 and 4. Both could do well with that, site 3 is practically made for Pinterest. I also put a dent into the backlog of shit content needing edited which is the slowest part of this because I fricking hate doing it. Things should pick up more momentum once I get through it.

Site 1 broke 50 visitors yesterday between Pinterest and organic search. For a new site that's pretty wild. If I was a smarter man I'd probably drop the other sites and focus purely on that one after this kind of early growth.

Not being that smart, instead, I've lined up site number 5. Domain has a few months on it and a handful of parasites for a trickle of traffic so it's not completely fresh but all the content is going to be brand new. Going to wait a week or two and make sure I'm completely caught up on things with the first 4 before launching it properly. I have a writer in mind but I don't know what their availability will be like for the next couple of weeks.

• 1,000 words site 1
• 1,600 words site 1
• 1,000 words site 3
• 1,000 words site 4
• 1,600 words site 4
• 1,200 words site 4
• 1,500 words site 4
• Roughly 12,000 words published to parasites.

Not sure if I'll work at the weekend or not. Part of me wants to keep pushing through the older shittier content so I can focus on scaling better and part of me just wants to sleep for the next 48 hours. I'll see how it goes.

Spent: $261.95

Looks very good, can't wait to see a big success story from this, good luck.

Saturday off. Considered taking today as well but I'm so close to catching up on the parasite backlog I wanted to push at least a little more.

Sales from both sites 1 and 3 last night which is good. The indexing bug with Google is hurting me a little at the moment and dropped some revenue on other projects a little which isn't widely motivating but it's likely short term. Can't do much about it so I'm focusing on moving forward while they fix their shit.

Started Pinterest properly for sites 3 and 4. Finished the parasite setup for 4. Probably not doing Pinterest for site 2 as the niche just doesn't fit but I might outsource some Quora traffic for sites 2 and 4 over the next week or two.

Content publishing went well today. Going to need to expand the rack tracker soon.

• 1,800 site 1
• 2,400 site 1
• 2,200 site 1
• 1,200 site 1
• 1,500 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• Got a guest post for site 3. Was a trial of a service I'm not wild about but I'll dig into the stats of the domain more tomorrow.
• Parasites: 14,500

Spent today: $277.40

Got a bunch of content coming in this week so we should keep the publishing numbers up. I'm almost through the parasite backlog I should have it tomorrow and then there's just some boring rewrites for site 1 and a couple of tougher edits for site 4 but not that much. Starting to see the light at the end of that tunnel and then I'll have more time to maybe push the social a bit harder this week.

DEFINE said:

Looks very good, can't wait to see a big success story from this, good luck.

Click to expand...

That makes two of us. Cheers

The written content publishing should be slowing down a bit now compared to last week. Not sure I want to put $500~/day into content and I'm almost caught up with the backlog. Could really have pushed to finish it today but I wanted to start putting some time into video content and that took some time to setup.

The current writer situation:
Site 1: Two writers.
Site 2: Two-Three writers. Judging the third on quality this week.
Site 3: Two writers
Site 4: One writer but they know the niche and have good availability so I'm leaving it with them.
Parasites: 3-4 writers. Wouldn't trust them with money site content but they're cheaper and should be enough to keep it fed.

Editing time is way down and overall I'm pretty happy with how things are going. Content, backlinks and the basics of social are all in place for now. I'd like to maybe get an extra 1-2 people on social but there are only so many hours in the day.

Where we are finally making some progress is in the video content arena. I want to start at least one YouTube channel up for one of these and I'm choosing site 3 for a couple of reasons.

• I want to see if it has any significant bearing on the domain organic rankings and since that site is one of the new ones starting at the same time as site 4 it's a good time to start the channel.
• The videos are easy enough to produce.
• I see a competitor doing millions of views a month in this space so the demand is there. Plenty of smaller channels I might be able to win against.

The plan for the channel is relatively straightforward since I don't have that much time to devote to a single channel. Get to 100 videos ASAP, send some traffic to get things started and then focus elsewhere while I see what happens. The basic plan is to do half the videos upfront (could probably get them all out this week) and then schedule the rest out to drip out every day or two.

YouTube isn't really my area so I'm not sure that's the best way but it means enough videos have time to get into the index and begin to rank and there's still enough dripping through to show the channel is active.

It took some time today to get things set up and likely the next day or two will be pretty busy with that as well but it's good to finally get this moving.

The only downside to doing it in this niche is I don't have much traffic and nothing warmed up for social in this one so I can't push much at it, to begin with. Going to have a think about how to handle this I might just accept it's going to be a slow starter or maybe get a little blackhat just to get things started there.

Content published:

• 1,000 site 3
• 1,300 site 1
• 1,200 site 1
• 1,100 site 1
• 1,000 site 4
• 1,000 site 4
• 1,000 site 4
• 1,000 parasites
• 4 videos

Spent: $285

Do you mainly make review articles for your parasites?

The rank tracker was a sea of green this morning. Including a page 1 slot for site 6 which I haven't officially started yet but I put up a few short pages just to get something into the index. I have a theory on why Google might like that domain and it would actually be really interesting but I'll wait and see once I can free up a writer to really produce content for it.

Most of the day was spent setting up videos and a little automation to maybe help speed the YouTube channel up a little. Nothing crazy but maybe just a little nudge in the right direction. I'm toying with the idea of running 100ish accounts to push likes, views and comments specifically to this channel but I'll see. I don't want to wind up going too far trying to come up with methods for YouTube when the whole idea is just to support the site's ranking. Getting the YouTube stuff set up was time-consuming but I think it's worth trying. Maybe 6 more hours tomorrow and I'll have enough to have 100 videos ready so I'll leave that for a while and see how it goes.

Will swap back to the written content tomorrow. Had some content handed in I just didn't get a chance to publish today and I'd like to push harder with the parasites than I have been lately.

Published today:

• 1,600 site 1
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,800 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,300 site 4
• 10 videos

Spent $154

dlyhai said:

Do you mainly make review articles for your parasites?

Click to expand...

Depends on the niche. Review articles are more common for Amazon affiliates because you get a lot more options. In most of my niches, there's not a whole lot of things to review. Given the chance I do though, those pages tend to convert.

SEOMadHatter said:

The rank tracker was a sea of green this morning. Including a page 1 slot for site 6 which I haven't officially started yet but I put up a few short pages just to get something into the index. I have a theory on why Google might like that domain and it would actually be really interesting but I'll wait and see once I can free up a writer to really produce content for it.

Most of the day was spent setting up videos and a little automation to maybe help speed the YouTube channel up a little. Nothing crazy but maybe just a little nudge in the right direction. I'm toying with the idea of running 100ish accounts to push likes, views and comments specifically to this channel but I'll see. I don't want to wind up going too far trying to come up with methods for YouTube when the whole idea is just to support the site's ranking. Getting the YouTube stuff set up was time-consuming but I think it's worth trying. Maybe 6 more hours tomorrow and I'll have enough to have 100 videos ready so I'll leave that for a while and see how it goes.

Will swap back to the written content tomorrow. Had some content handed in I just didn't get a chance to publish today and I'd like to push harder with the parasites than I have been lately.

Published today:

• 1,600 site 1
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,800 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,300 site 4
• 10 videos

Spent $154



Depends on the niche. Review articles are more common for Amazon affiliates because you get a lot more options. In most of my niches, there's not a whole lot of things to review. Given the chance I do though, those pages tend to convert.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I use site.google.com for clickbank products with review articles but not got good result, no rank. Medium don't even allow placing link. I don't know how to do next.

Lost a whole bunch of time today to a tech issue. Had a server die on me and I wasn't paying enough attention to even notice for a fortnight. Cost me half the day but at least that's sorted.

Got a JV sorted for the YouTube channel. I gave them access to a bot of mine and they're helping to produce the bulk of the videos. I'll also give them 50% of the channel revenue if it gets enough traffic itself. This frees me up to get the channel to 100 videos without having to really spend time on it myself. As site 3 and the YouTube channel are in the same niche, mostly the same keywords and content is posting roughly the same time it's actually going to be interesting for me to see how a YouTube channel grows vs a normal blog. My guess is going to be that YouTube grows faster but the EPV is going to be a lot higher on the blog if it ranks.

I'd really like to spend a little more time screwing with the YouTube algo. See if building an engagement pod in the niche boosts ranking or if you can spike the bounce rate for the competition. But curiosity killed the cat so I'll settle for letting the JV get the videos up and I'll get back to working on the written content so I'll get more into that tomorrow. Got a bunch of content to edit through tomorrow.

• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,500 site 4
• Videos: 4

Spent today: $46

dlyhai said:

Thanks, I use site.google.com for clickbank products with review articles but not got good result, no rank. Medium don't even allow placing link. I don't know how to do next.

Click to expand...

It's not an overnight process. Lots of content, lots of testing and while parasites are faster than a new domain it takes time for most of them to rank.

SEOMadHatter said:

Lost a whole bunch of time today to a tech issue. Had a server die on me and I wasn't paying enough attention to even notice for a fortnight. Cost me half the day but at least that's sorted.

Got a JV sorted for the YouTube channel. I gave them access to a bot of mine and they're helping to produce the bulk of the videos. I'll also give them 50% of the channel revenue if it gets enough traffic itself. This frees me up to get the channel to 100 videos without having to really spend time on it myself. As site 3 and the YouTube channel are in the same niche, mostly the same keywords and content is posting roughly the same time it's actually going to be interesting for me to see how a YouTube channel grows vs a normal blog. My guess is going to be that YouTube grows faster but the EPV is going to be a lot higher on the blog if it ranks.

I'd really like to spend a little more time screwing with the YouTube algo. See if building an engagement pod in the niche boosts ranking or if you can spike the bounce rate for the competition. But curiosity killed the cat so I'll settle for letting the JV get the videos up and I'll get back to working on the written content so I'll get more into that tomorrow. Got a bunch of content to edit through tomorrow.

• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,500 site 4
• Videos: 4

Spent today: $46



Cheers



It's not an overnight process. Lots of content, lots of testing and while parasites are faster than a new domain it takes time for most of them to rank.



Cheers

Click to expand...

Thanks, I will continue testing

Didn't get nearly as much done today as I wanted. I think I'm going to take an actual consecutive weekend off or maybe the Friday/Saturday. Maybe take tomorrow off and see how it goes from there. Handed out work to a couple of the writers so there'll still be work going on but I feel like I'm getting a little too close to burnout here.

Video production is on pause for the day. The mic wasn't quite getting the quality right and looks like the Yeti's are finally back in stock so I ordered one of those. Not counting it in the expenses of this project since it'll probably get used enough elsewhere but that was about $150 and the JV should have that tomorrow to get going again.

Content published today:

• Site 2 1,700 words
• Site 2 1,600 words
• Site 2 1,700 words
• Site 2 1,500 words
• Site 2 1,400 words
• Site 2 1,600 words
• site 4 2,000 words
• site 4 1,200 words
• site 4 1,000 words
• Videos: 2
• Parasites: 1,700 words.

Spent: $369

Took the weekend off again. If I get a break in the weather I think I'll take another day this week as well. I've been productive but I'm just missing the outside world today. Half of today was sunk into a different project which took longer than expected but it's good to have it off my plate. The rest of this week should be free to focus on content and I'm actually planning to do a fair bit of video work.

A couple of bits of good news:

• Three sales on site 1.
• Beginning signs of sites 3 and 4 finally getting into the index.
• First subs and comments on the YouTube channel for site 3.

Also lined up someone to produce some videos for a channel on site 4. Hoping to have that started this week but next week by the latest. If I can find the time I'm going to try and do a small engagement group of subs on that one and see the difference in growth between the channels for sites 3 and 4. I want to make a real push on the parasite publishing and maybe write some content myself for site 1.

Content published today:

• 1,600 site 1
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,200 site 4
• Videos: 5

Spent: $509.85

Huge thread, subscribing...you are on a different level with about 6k spent monthly

But those parasites are interesting for me - you said Pinterest is works good for you - do you promote your pins somehow? How much content do you use in your pins?

Thanks

The JV made a huge push and now has about 70 videos ready to publish. Not going to track that each day anymore just letting them drip them out and I'll see what happens with that channel. I'm hoping to start the channel for site 4 this week.

Cutting today off early. Loads more I wanted to get done but just feeling like a little too much groundhog day lately.

Content published:

• 1,200 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 4
• 1,000 site 4
• 1,700 site 4

Nothing spent today.

traged said:

Huge thread, subscribing...you are on a different level with about 6k spent monthly

But those parasites are interesting for me - you said Pinterest is works good for you - do you promote your pins somehow? How much content do you use in your pins?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Keep in mind my spending is high but only because I'm impatient. Sites 1 and 2 are now the biggest single sites I've ever made in terms of content and investment and the other two aren't far behind. I'm out of my depth here and it could absolutely go tits up.

I've worked quite a bit on Pinterest in the past with automated content and tiered re-pinning but I haven't made much time for it this time around. I've just been haphazardly re-pinning randomly in batches as I go. I want the accounts to get some age and once I have more time I'll loop back and work on actual Pinterest promotion. For now, I just want the pins up with longtail keywords because Google is spreading that shit everywhere.

Took yesterday off completely. Just couldn't face sitting at the desk. Fuck this pandemic.

My original goal here was 100k words a month but I'm pretty sure I've blown through that and that's been with a lot of delays early on and other projects taking up time. I prefer this way of finding writing who can produce content for a specific site so I'm not going to worry too much about setting targets like this. Just keep writers working on their sites and get something done.

Started site number 6. Yeah... I know. It's a similar situation to site 5, I have a trickle of parasite traffic for it already and a potential writer who'll be able to handle it. So I just wanted to get it started so it can start the sandbox process while I focus on finishing sites 1-4. The domain is a few weeks old and all the content will be new. It has a trickle of traffic already which won't hurt things but only a few pages so far.

In other good news:

• Both sites 1 and 2 took some new page 1 spots today. One keyword is becoming a good performer for site 1.
• Sites 3 and 4 indexing is picking up. Not too bothered about Google removing the manual index options as I never use them anyway. Just going to let them sort their shit out but it's good to see it start to pop up in the SERPs.
• YouTube channel for site 3 is doing better than I would have expected. Watched a stream of legit likes, comments and subs today. Obviously, a very different beast in terms of revenue but (unsurprisingly) YouTube grows faster than an SEO site.

Setting up site 6 took up a chunk of time today and I had some tech issues from other projects but I managed to edit and publish some content and got another stack sent to writers to handle over the next couple of days.

• 1,400 site 1
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1.000 site 3
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,000 site 6

Spent: $445

Great journey so far.

I have some questions though :
- What kind of video do you order for each website? Just a summary of each article or what? And in what format (motion design, animation, powerpoint, collage...? How long each?
- What will be your strategy for Pinterest? I'm planning to dive into it, but I don't know what plan to follow until now so the account I created is just rotting there.

Thanks for your replies and keep grinding.

Sweetrevenge said:

Great journey so far.

I have some questions though :
- What kind of video do you order for each website? Just a summary of each article or what? And in what format (motion design, animation, powerpoint, collage...? How long each?
- What will be your strategy for Pinterest? I'm planning to dive into it, but I don't know what plan to follow until now so the account I created is just rotting there.

Thanks for your replies and keep grinding.

Click to expand...

Most of my experience with YouTube and Pinterest has been producing various forms of automated content with scripts so I'm probably not the best one to ask here. Don't take what I do is the right way to do this - my main goal is ranking the organic written content and the other stuff is mostly just to provide support for doing that. The extra traffic which comes from it is just a bonus.

- The niche will really dictate the type of video. If I did a site on Golf, for example, I'd need to get a club and get on camera or pay a bunch of money to get some real animation done. I probably wouldn't bother with cheap-looking storyboard stuff in a niche where everyone else is doing so much better quality. One or two people simply talking to a camera can work in a lot of niches or if it's an informative video which doesn't necessarily need demonstration then a slideshow with a voiceover. If it's going to look shit compared to the competition then it's not really going to be worth bothering with.

- Answered the Pinterest question above. Right now there is no strategy, I'm just haphazardly pinning as I go with no real rhyme or reason. I've worked on tiered re-pinning systems in the past but right now Google is just spamming pins all over the place it's just like shooting fish in a barrel.

If I thought for a moment Google was going to leave Pinterest ranking all over the place like this I'd drop every other project and just churn out thousands of pins a day right now.

As it stands I'm just pinning posts as I go and letting the accounts age in. Some niches are well suited for Pinterest and I'll put more effort into their promotion a few months down the line.

SEOMadHatter said:

Sadly interesting isn't the word for an SEO journey in the early stages but thanks.

Click to expand...

It's interesting for those following the journey because we're eager to see how it pans out. It won't be interesting for you though until you begin to earn some decent money from these sites.

I've had another project take up a little time and I snagged a few hours off over the weekend so caught up content publishing today so I don't fall behind and wind up with a massive backlog.

The good news:

Over the weekend we had sales on sites 1, 3, and 4. Sites 2 and 5 don't have affiliate links in place yet but there were a few clicks on the dummy links so who knows they might have converted as well. I need to do a little work on this side of things. It was a mix of the little trickle of organic and some Pinterest traffic converted too.

Not a ton of money maybe $100ish all together but still a good way to end the week.

Trialing two new writers for site 6 and maybe someone for site 5 I'm waiting to hear back.

It's kind of cool seeing subs and comments on the YouTube channel. I'm not doing a whole lot with it now just letting the JV videos publish over time and sending a little traffic here and there.

The bad news:

Looks like one of the writers has either had a lobotomy or started outsourcing the content to someone cheaper. Such a drop in quality it's going to take me a bunch of time to edit and fix that content. I respect the hustle but I don't do second chances so he's out. I've already got someone else to handle the content for that site and they do a better job anyway.

Still going to cost me a few hours to edit this stuff though.

Content:

• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,700 site 2
• 1,600 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 6
• 1,500 site 6

Spent $499

I've got more content waiting to be published for all of them except site 5. I want to try and get all of it published tomorrow so I keep on top of things.

Jerk55 said:

It's interesting for those following the journey because we're eager to see how it pans out. It won't be interesting for you though until you begin to earn some decent money from these sites.

Click to expand...

I think it'll be interesting to look back in 8 months time (assuming the world hasn't ended by then) if these sites pick up some traction. Right now it's like watching paint dry with less sleep.

Alright. Groundhog Day #230:


Got myself an office for the week just for a change of scenery. Not a whole lot to update with today, I got caught up dealing with tech issues of a different project again. Did write an article myself just to shake things up a bit.

Content published:

• 1,500 words site 1
• 1,000 words site 1
• 1,700 words site 2
• 1,800 words site 2
• 1,000 words site 3
• 1,000 words site 3
• 1,500 words site 4

Spent: $0. I did want to get some stuff lined up but just didn't have the time.

Rolling two days into one here. It's been a busy one. Lot's going on.

First up I lost 6+ hours yesterday dealing with tech issues from another project which held me up more than I'd like. Ghost in the machine issue I repeatedly thought had been fixed but it looks like it's finally done. Today I lost a bit of time as well getting locked out of my PayPal account which took time to deal with (longer than it should) and meant I had issues paying writers on time.

Wasn't a great 48 hours but both are sorted now and I have quite a number of updates.

Backlinks:

When I ordered some outreach links (I think it was site 1 and 2) I used different payment details and wasn't surprised to see both orders with links from the same domains. I don't know if the service owns those domains or is just going for the easy wins with publishers they already have agreements with.

Either way, if I'm getting PBN links, I might as well just get PBN links and pay those prices. For outreach rates they were shit. Little to no traffic and one is 90% bestiality. Thanks for that.

On the other hand, going direct got me a link for something like $150 which was over 50k visits, in my niche and DA 50+ if you want to go by third party metrics. Also offered a $40 link the HOTH are charging $500 for. Fuck I'm in the wrong game. So I'm still to find an outreach service which I think is any better than a PBN. It might just be time I start doing the outreach myself I'll get fewer links but at least I get a better say in what domains I end up paying for.

In the meantime, I picked up two guest posts for site 2.

YouTube

There were likes and comments on a new video within minutes of it being published. The JV messaged assuming it was me working on an engagement group or something but these were actually genuine.

The channel for site 4 is taking a backseat for this week at least I've just got caught up in too much other stuff. I want to test that out with more of a call to action to a link in the description as I prefer sales to just running ads but it's going to take at least a day or two to get the ball rolling.

Other Bits and Pieces

• I'm testing running some direct traffic at site 4 to see if it has any bearing on the sandbox. There are case studies which suggest traffic can improve rankings and I've heard this from people I generally trust in SEO. I'm curious to see if site 4 comes out of the sandbox sooner than expected after sending a few thousand hits consistently. We're averaging about 150/day at the moment and I plan to keep that going for about a month. No expectations one way or the other, just idle curiosity.
• Caught up on a bunch of Pinterest backlog. It's insane how much this is just been spread over the SERPs right now.
• Potentially working on a different project with a JV for something new tomorrow. It'll add a bit to my workload this week and maybe next depending on how things go but could be worth it. I'll still keep this going, maybe just toned down for a couple of days.

Content:

• 1,600 site 2
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,000 site 3
• 1,500 site 4
• 1,000 site 4
• 1,600 site 4
• 1,200 site 6
• 1,000 site 6

Spent: $696.40 (bit of a spike with some links for site 2).

megaMind007 said:

Good luck with your new journey mate!

Click to expand...

Cheers